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There are a few times in my life when I have been broken apart. It's the kind of cracking open where you never quite put yourself back together the same way - in the way a seashell gets broken open after housing something so delicate and tender for so very long. You feel permanently broken in some way. And while these breaks can be repaired, the fracture leaves you vulnerable and wounded - fleshy soft innards now exposed.

As it turns out, while being cracked wide open can be painful, it is also somehow beautiful as well. It leaves you changed, but somehow ready for something new. There is more space to fill up with less of what you don't need there anymore. There is more room for all the important things - growth, expansion, love, freedom. There is now room for learning and becoming something new. There is space in the vulnerability.

The thing I have learned is this: the beauty often comes from the breaking. The best part comes after all the smoke dissipates and the clean up begins, because what you are left with is often precisely what you needed to begin with.